


Granda

by Advena87



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Aiden (The Witcher) Lives, Bisexual Lambert (The Witcher), Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Fix-It, Love Triangles, M/M, Post-Blood and Wine (The Witcher 3 DLC), Post-The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, The Witcher 3 Spoilers, Witchers Have Feelings (The Witcher)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:47:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25669177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Advena87/pseuds/Advena87
Summary: Lambert and Keira Metz after the events of Wild Hunt run a joint business in Lan Exeter. Unexpectedly, a stranger witcher appears on their doorstep with an unusual task.
Relationships: Aiden/Lambert (The Witcher), Aiden/Lambert/Keira Metz, Lambert/Keira Metz
Comments: 15
Kudos: 34





	Granda

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Granda](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23947909) by [Advena87](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Advena87/pseuds/Advena87). 



> Granda (polish) - rumpus, ruction, brawl, bunch; but also: fraud, hoax, humbug.
> 
> This is a translation of my Polish fic with the same title. The translation was created in cooperation with [eatingcroutons](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eatingcroutons/profile), and had it not been for their help, this text probably wouldn't be readable. So please give a lot of love to my wonderful beta for their hard work.

Lan Exeter was a beautiful port city, full of vivid but narrow houses and canals instead of streets. The winter capital of Kovir and Poviss, like the whole country, was welcoming to sorceresses and sorcerers who had escaped from war-torn Redania and Radowid’s witch hunters. Magicians from the Northern Kingdoms found here a safe haven, jobs, and were afforded great freedom in conducting their research and experiments.

Despite these many advantages Keira Metz didn’t like living here. It was difficult for her to explain it rationally; she really couldn’t complain about anything, especially after what she’d been through hiding in Velen. But Lan Exeter got on her nerves. She couldn’t focus here and felt something hanging in the air.

Lambert on the other hand was very pleased with their new location. Despite the fact that it had been Triss Merigold who arranged for them enter Kovir, it was the witcher who had suggested the winter capital as the right place to start their small project. He had acquaintances here; in the past he had carried out several large contracts for important officials. Thanks to those acquaintances, they hadn’t encountered any major problems renting a small but well-kept tenement house not far from the city’s main square. At the start they’d paid for it with what Lambert had saved from contracts, and Keira’s savings went into the apparatus for the laboratory she arranged in the attic of the building. Now the sorceress had established her own business, from which she was making considerable profits and they split the expenses in half.

She couldn’t complain about that either. Despite his difficult character, Lambert was a resourceful and responsible man when it came to finances. He systematically searched for contracts and efficiently bargained with clients. He wasn’t wasteful and basically the only things he spent money on were weapons. As for his alchemical ingredients and components, Keira made sure he didn’t run out of anything. Whenever she took orders for her business, she took into account the witcher’s need for potions. Before they knew it, they’d worked out a routine for functioning and cooperation on both private and professional grounds. And that was another thing that had been bothering her for some time.

Her relationship with Lambert was turbulent at times, but it was otherwise exemplary. The Witcher didn’t cause problems, except for the fact that he sometimes returned half-dead from work. And that was basically the only thing they argued about. Both of them had explosive temperaments, and arguments could sometimes alarm their neighbors. They always found their finale in bed, which didn’t diminish the amount of decibels they generated. Keira had eventually cast a silencing spell on their building, because tenants from behind the wall threatened to report the noise to the owner of the house.

Either way, her life under one roof with the witcher had slowly and disturbingly begun to resemble a marriage. And just thinking about that made Keira shiver. That wasn’t her ambition. She had never dreamed of hiding in a charming house at the end of the world with The One. Keira wanted power and fame. Constantly thinking back to the time she sat on the royal council of Temeria, she still remembered the conventions of sorcerers and the feasts of the elite, where her word was sacred. That Keira Metz had worn the most fashionable and provocative outfits, and every night she’d had a different lover, drunk the most expensive and exquisite wines on the Continent. Pulling the strings of the political scene of the country was her element. She’d had a reputation, people had known her name and respected it. She wanted to create history and have fun, she wanted to taste life. Meanwhile, she was sitting in the politically neutral and boring Kovir, where no one knew who she was, selling her knowledge to the populace and sleeping with a witcher.

Well, it was still a few steps better than gods-forgotten Velen, with a bunch of illiterate peasants paying her with eggs and bugs sharing her bed. Not to mention the threat of being burned at the stake that had hung over her then. So she knew it could always be worse. And she really couldn’t say she was unhappy here, just … it wasn’t the kind of happiness she wanted. And Lambert himself was a completely unsolvable matter. They weren’t officially together, neither of them had brought up the funny idea of having a serious relationship. Lambert was supposed to help her with her research, and sex was just a nice addition for both of them. They didn’t claim any rights to each other, they didn’t swear allegiance or devotion, they just went with the flow and in some unexplained way they had found themselves in this place. In a shared apartment, with a shared business and a shared life. Keira couldn’t remember when she had spent so many nights in her own bed with the same man by her side. She was beginning to fear that it had never really happened before.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a bell. In the tenement they rented, the ground floor had been adapted for Keira’s magical business. At the front door, which was constantly open to the public, they’d hung a bell that signaled the arrival of a potential customer. The sorceress rose from behind her table, closed her book, which she was reviewing to make a mixture ordered by one of the townsmen, and headed for the curtain separating the back room from the main part of the store.

She saw the figure next to the bookcase and thought it was Lambert for a split second. She was fooled by the two swords on his back - such characteristic accessories for her witcher. But it wasn’t Lambert. The man was slightly taller, but thinner. He was standing with his back to her, and he had a hood over his head, but the sorceress knew her witcher too well to confuse him with someone else, she had no doubt. The newcomer wasn’t interested in books, but in other objects displayed beside a bookcase. Keira shuddered a little. Of all the things that were in this room, he had to choose those ones.

“How can I help you?” She finally said, hoping that would surprise him and divert his attention from the things he was looking at, but nothing like that happened.

The man, unmoved by her question, still with his back to her, reached for the hilt of one of the two swords leaning against the bookcase. He grabbed it and pulled the blade out of the scabbard.

"It’s not for sale,” she said firmly, and finally got a reaction.

The stranger turned slowly toward Keira, looked her up and down, and a pair of amber cat eyes flashed from under his hood.

“Witcher,” she noted with surprise.

The man weighed the sword in his hand, ran his fingers over the carved runes. Keira didn’t miss the way he was holding it. To be sure, she looked at his own swords protruding from his left shoulder. He was left-handed.

Lambert had once told her that a left-handed swordsman is a real pain in the ass. A left-handed witcher, on the other hand, is a death sentence. Admittedly, it doesn’t make a difference with monsters, but warriors trained in swordsmanship don’t have much chance against someone like that. Regardless of school, master or experience, almost every swordsman has a dominant right hand. Even if he was born left-handed, when he begins training he is immediately switched to his right. Those who decide to train on the left have more difficulty learning, but the advantage they gain is huge. Left-handers are accustomed to right-handed opponents, they are his daily bread, but people relying on their right have a very difficult task fighting a mirror image. As a result, the established view is that a left-handed swordsman is a cheater without honor, so there are only a few schools and masters favorable to teaching left-handers on their dominant hand. Unless they want to train assassins.

“The devil does not sleep.“ The witcher read the inscription from the blade, still carefully examining the sword. “Silver blade, witcher gear. Where did you get it?”

“It’s not for sale,” she repeated and walked over to him, emphatically raising her hand, expecting that he would give her the weapon. “It belongs to my business partner, also a witcher.”

“I see…” He smiled at her, which revealed dimples in his cheeks, but it was hard to call his smile cordial. He obediently gave her the sword and finally lowered his hood.

Keira blinked in surprise. She may not have been an expert, but apart from Lambert, she had also dealt with his brothers from the Wolf School and Foltest’s assassin. Those witchers were each interesting in their own way, but it was hard to fit them into the standard canon of beauty. The one in front of her was a little more unusual than the norm she knew.

First of all, he was a redhead. She’d lived among the villagers long enough to know that ‘redhead’ was for them a synonym for ‘soulless freak’. So the red-headed _and_ left-handed _witcher_ would probably be cursed three times over in their view. Of course, these were only nonsense superstitions of the illiterate pleb, but someone with such qualities had to have found it extremely hard on the path. His appearance alone was enough for people not to trust him.

Secondly, he looked young. Witchers in general aged very slowly, but she had never met a monster slayer who looked as young as this one. It wasn’t about the number of wrinkles he had – he had the youthful charm of a teenage daredevil, and when he smiled, two deep dimples appeared on his cheeks. However, his cold gaze revealed that his teenage years were long past. Those eyes had seen enough to look distrustful and insensitive now. Combined with his beautiful but predatory smile, he looked like a hungry shark.

Thirdly, he had no scars on his face except for one, thin as a thread, that cut his lips vertically on the right and disappeared just above his chin. It was visible mainly because the witcher had some stubble on his jaw; if it weren’t for that, it wouldn’t have been visible at first glance. Keira hadn’t yet met a witcher without obvious scars disfiguring his face. This witcher’s only noticeable defect was his damaged right ear. The helix was clearly jagged, and although the wound had completely healed, it seemed to be a fairly recent one.

"Your partner left without his swords?” the witcher asked with a sneer, and Keira felt uncomfortable.

The tenement house was two storeys, there could have been two dozen partners upstairs, but the newcomer knew she was here alone. The sorceress wasn’t particularly fearful and usually she felt more than at ease with men, but he gave her goosebumps. And not the good kind.

In general, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to her that he knew exactly who was and wasn’t around. She’d lived with Lambert long enough to learn that he could hear from the ground floor a falling pin upstairs, but for some reason she’d attributed this skill only to him. Meanwhile, superhuman senses were a feature of all witchers.

"These are souvenirs,” she explained and invited him to the table where she hosted clients. Before she joined him she put the sword back into its sheath and laid it on the table. “He doesn’t use them, so I wanted to hang them on the wall for decoration, but he didn’t agree. And then I forgot to put them back in their place.”

"Why didn’t he agree?” The witcher asked in a conversational tone, as if he were talking about the weather, and sat down, taking off his fingerless leather gloves.

"Like I said, these are souvenirs,” she repeated, shrugging. “They have sentimental value and, in his words: ‘these aren’t ceremonial sabers to hang on the wall’.”

"So neither for show nor for use,” the witcher said, looking at the weapon in front of him for a moment, then looked up at Keira, clearly dropping his gaze to her décolletage. An expression passed over his face, and Keira could have sworn it was one of amusement. But it disappeared as quickly as it appeared, and after a moment the witcher looked her straight in her eyes, his face revealing nothing. “A waste of good steel. I will gladly buy them, I can offer a good price.”

Keira frowned. She had already told him twice that the swords weren’t for sale. However, that wasn’t what worried her. Neither did the fact that he was looking at her decolletage. She noted that with relief, because it was something she could deal with – finally he showed some human traits, even if the view amused him for some reason. What she didn’t like here was how quickly he’d decided to make a purchase. He hadn’t even looked at the second sword!

She’d witnessed how Lambert bought new blades. The whole process had lasted almost a month. A month of inspecting and comparing weapons from various craftsmen, a month of whining and fussing, and finally commissioning them to be forged. Even then he was still dealing with the materials, because it was necessary to import a special steel alloy. It had cost her witcher a lot of nerves and even more money, but he’d told her then that his life depended on those blades. They needed to be an extension of his hand, no compromises. 

And this witcher wanted to buy swords that he hadn’t even looked at properly.

Maybe he collected them, or maybe he was just stupid. It didn’t matter, Keira wasn’t going to sell them, even if he had a mountain of gold. Those swords were important to Lambert.

“Not for sale,” she repeated for the third time, this time in the tone she’d used to silence royal advisers in the council when they started becoming pains in the ass. “Please, you’d better tell me what brings you to me. And to Lan Exeter if I can ask. A witcher in this city is quite an unusual thing.”

“From what I’ve found out, you live with a witcher,” he raised an eyebrow. “You’re one of the last people who should be surprised.”

“That’s why it’s unusual. Two witchers in the capital are a crowd.”

“I must admit that this is not a coincidence. I’m looking for a partner to fulfill a large, difficult contract. A powerful imperial manticore has been coming down from the mountains to attack nearby villages. Kidnapping people, slaughtering cattle. Three villages funded a reward.”

“So you didn’t come to talk to me, but to my partner,” she said, ready to end the discussion there. She couldn’t take contracts on behalf of Lambert.

And this one sounded really bad. Maybe the money could be good, but manticores were extremely dangerous. If the monster had flown here from the mountains, then the trip to track it down would be long and exhausting. She didn’t like it at all.

“I’m not just here about the manticore, I also have a request for you. It is very fortunate for me to find a sorceress and witcher in one place, although _that_ is an unusual thing.”

“Maybe here in Kovir. Where I come from bards even sing ballads about the unions of witchers and sorceresses. A few of my colleagues value such collaborations very much, so I decided to take their advice and enter into a … partnership with a witcher.”

“I know master Dandelion’s ballads,” he smiled mischievously, and she had to admit that he looked attractive with that smirk on his face, even if it raised hairs on the back of her neck. For some reason, his smiles felt like a bad omen for her. “And please forgive my boldness, but is your deal just business, or do you also aspire to be ballad heroes?”

Keira raised an eyebrow and finally realized what she didn’t like about this witcher. His cat’s eyes were vigilant, but the way he surveyed the room and looked at her… without doubt it was a predator’s gaze. A predator who had just scented prey and was getting ready to pounce. The sorceress returned his gaze and finally began to analyze more closely what she saw. Neither the weapon nor the armor he wore had any distinctive school features. And most importantly and most disturbing of all: this witcher didn’t have a medallion around his neck. And a witcher without a medallion couldn’t use signs.

What the hell? She was beginning to conclude that everything was wrong with this stranger. And no wonder he was looking for a partner to kill the manticore. It would have been a lonely expedition hunting such a quarry, and without the ability to use signs, it would be suicide.

“Interesting question,” she said finally after slightly too long a pause. The witcher narrowed his eyes as if he sensed she was uncomfortable. “Are you asking out of professional curiosity?”

“Entirely private.” And there was that beautiful smile again, but this time it clearly contained a threat. Like an animal baring its fangs before it attacks. “You’re a beautiful woman. I was wondering if you’d want to replace your witcher.”

Keira frowned and looked at him with disdain, finally openly letting him know that she didn’t like the direction in which this conversation was going. Far more than once in her life she’d had to deal with unsubtle advances, and all in all, this witcher hadn’t crossed any boundaries yet, but something was very wrong here. Keira never avoided men – even those who weren’t very subtle, if she was in a good mood, could count on flirting with her. This one, however, didn’t flirt. Contrary to what he’d just said, he wasn’t interested in her, not in the way he was suggesting. His gaze was cold and calculating, but she saw no desire in it. 

“Please forgive me if I sent the wrong signals,” she finally announced icily, although she knew that she hadn’t – and that her exposed breasts, which were often interpreted that way, mainly amused her interlocutor. “So now let me be clear, to avoid any further misunderstandings: _my_ witcher and I are loyal to each other. Both professionally and privately. I’m flattered by your interest, but let’s get back to business. _My_ witcher would be very unhappy if he knew that we’d raised such a topic.”

She said this to give him a clear warning. What she meant by this was that if this witcher had ill intentions towards her, he would have to take into account that she had another witcher backing her up, who would deal with him if even a hair on her head was harmed. However, she was surprised to find that her words were the truth. She wouldn’t turn her back on Lambert, she wouldn’t betray him, even if this witcher turned out to be King Tancred himself. And she was sure Lambert wouldn’t turn his back on her either. The awareness of this startled her more than the bizarre conversation she was having with her annoying visitor. She quickly put those thoughts out of her mind; this wasn’t the time to analyze her relationship with Lambert.

"My apologies if I offended you.” He raised his hands defensively and something changed in his posture. He became less tense and less alert. The predatory gleam in his eyes was gone too, but he didn’t seem in any way contrite or embarrassed. “I’m not looking for trouble. It just seemed to me extremely… exotic that a sorceress, a woman of scholarship, of such status, was interested in a witcher. Perhaps I envied my colleague a little. You understand, we don’t have a very good reputation.”

 ** _You_** _certainly don’t,_ she thought.

“That depends on the school.” She finally decided to attack, she was getting tired of this game of cat and mouse. “But you don’t wear a medallion. What school are you from? It’s quite strange, I thought a witcher’s medallion was sacred.”

The man made a gesture as if to reach for his neck, but he immediately caught himself and nipped the reflex in the bud. He winced slightly.

“That’s what my request for you was supposed to be about,” he said. “Some time ago I lost my medallion. It’s hard to find a good craftsman to make such a thing. I was hoping that a sorceress could help me. I’ve heard a lot of good things about you, people praise your amulets and potions. In addition, you work with a witcher, which makes you, in my eyes, more qualified than the rest of the wizards in the city.”

“I’ve never had a similar order, I will have to ask Lambert to show me his medallion.” For the first time she mentioned her witcher’s name and noticed how her interlocutor’s eyebrow twitched slightly. She had to admit he’d surprised her with this order. She also noted how carefully he’d avoided the question about his school. “Also, there is no elemental circle in the area to charge it, although there are a lot of intersections in the city due to the wide network of canals and the water flowing through them … I’ll have to cast the silver, and have to order the mold from a craftsman… Either way, it’ll be expensive.”

“As I mentioned, I have an eye on a big contract,” he reminded her. “So I should be able to afford it. Please carry out a valuation, I’ll be able to cover that much with my savings. And here we come back to the heart of my visit. When can I expect _your_ witcher to return? I’m very keen to cooperate with him. I can offer a profit split of up to 30-70, in favor of _your_ witcher, of course, but I hope that I will get a discount on the medallion in return. If you have time now, we could discuss some initial numbers.”

The way he said "your witcher” made her think. She had deliberately emphasized that relationship earlier in order to make him understand some things, but now he made his point with scorn, lined with mockery. She couldn’t help but get the feeling that what he really meant to say here was: “Where is your pet witcher? Will you lend it to me?” and it immediately infuriated her.

“Slow down, witcher,” she barely suppressed a hiss. “Lambert is my partner and I won’t be bidding without him. We don’t even know if he’ll be interested in this at all, so for the moment please consider the medallion issue and your manticore contract to be two completely separate matters. How you resolve the issue of splitting profits will be up to the two of you. Then I will consider consulting with him on whether that transaction will be related to the medallion in any way.”

The witcher raised his eyebrows, his face expressive for the first time. He was surprised. And he was probably pleasantly surprised, because his gaze softened. Previously, it had lost its ferocity, now there was a gleam of sympathy in it.

“I guess I’ve made a blunder again,” he said, but he didn’t seem too concerned about it. He looked like he was starting to have fun. “Since you are a scholarly woman, I assumed that you were the head of this business.”

“Don’t you know the meaning of the word ‘partner’?” Keira was finding it harder and harder to hide her anger, her mask slowly starting to slip, she was on the verge of showing him why teasing a sorceress is a bad idea.

“Oh, I know. In the past I’ve even been called a partner myself.” She found his stupid smile less attractive and more irritating with each passing moment. “But witchers have a hard time in the business world, and we are rarely treated as _equal_ partners. We’re usually just boys here to do the dirty work. People value our skills but not us. To them, we are no different from rabid dogs that are unleashed in pursuit of prey, and the command is always the same: kill. Do you know what they do with a rabid dog after it does its job?”

“I can imagine,” she said coldly. “And I conclude, from what I’ve just heard, that you don’t know the _correct_ meaning of the word ‘partner’. You know a highly distorted meaning of the term. Genuinely sorry to hear all this, but I’m not a rabid dog breeder and you won’t find any here. However, when it comes to my _partner_ –”

She broke off when the witcher unexpectedly put a finger to his lips, non-verbally ordering her to be silent. She hadn’t expected this, and opened her mouth to protest, but realized that her interlocutor had suddenly become very tense and focused. He tilted his head a little, like an animal that had heard a strange noise, listened for a moment, then sighed heavily, closed his eyes and froze as if waiting for something.

Keira was amazed at how his attitude completely changed in a split second. A moment earlier he had been nonchalant and self-confident, now he was sitting in front of her hunched over, evidently disturbed and anxious. Was he the same person at all?

The bell at the door rang and Keira looked away from the man in front of her, toward the entrance. She saw Lambert in bloody armor on the doorstep, but he moved freely, and didn’t seem injured. Some time ago now, the sight of blood on his clothes had stopped alarming her, because it usually wasn’t his.

“Are you all right?” she asked anyway, immediately abandoning her visitor and getting up from the table, heading towards Lambert.

“Yeah,” he replied a bit impatiently. He looked annoyed with her concern, but Keira knew better. There was no anger in his gaze, he was glad to see her. “It’s just –”

He paused as his eyes finally fell on the witcher sitting at the table. The stranger sat with his back to the door and didn’t bother to turn and see who had just arrived. Keira understood that his earlier behavior was due to the fact that he had heard Lambert approaching. Lambert must also have been aware of the client’s presence before he even entered the house, but it seemed that he’d only just noticed that it was a witcher.

“We have a visitor?” He looked at Keira, and there was a question in that look: Is this a client or a threat? It seemed that he’d sensed the tense atmosphere and the sorceress’s nervousness.

"Yes, this is–” She paused mid-sentence, as she had been about to introduce them, but realized that the strange witcher hadn’t deigned to give his name. So she turned to him, this time openly irritated. “What is your name, Mr. Witcher, without school and medallion?”

The man at the table slowly straightened and stood up. He waited for an unbearably long moment before he turned to face them. And he looked straight at Lambert.

Everything that happened next took fractions of a second. Lambert inhaled sharply and immediately reached into his belt pouch. He took a silver orion out and threw it at the strange witcher, but the witcher seemed to be waiting for it. He put his hand out in a defensive gesture, the star digging into his right hand. If he hadn’t, it would have hit him in the chest, but not in any vital areas.

Keira absolutely didn’t understand what was going on, but the moment Lambert attacked she had a defensive spell on her lips, ready to stun the second monster slayer. She noticed that as Lambert made his throw, he hissed in pain, which meant he must have been injured. Keira firmly resolved not to let him fight an opponent who was left-handed and at full strength. Unlike him.

“Easy, sorceress, he was just checking,” the red-haired witcher said, very slowly showing his hand to her with the orion embedded in it. “This toy is silver.” After that, with a firm wave of his arm, he threw the star aside. It dug into the wooden floor at their feet, leaving a bloody streak behind it.

Keira was still holding the active spell in her clenched fist, but after this declaration she dropped her guard. Her eyes followed the orion, then looked up at Lambert.

Her witcher, after his initial violent reaction, stared at the other man. Keira hadn’t seen an expression like this on his face before. Lambert was absolutely shocked and furious.

“He’s checking to see if I’m a doppler.” The stranger kept both of his hands in plain view, as if he were making a gesture to assure them he was not a threat. “I’m not,” he added softly. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to hold silver in my hand. I’m bleeding so I’m not a ghost either. I can also tell the story of your commemorative swords to prove that I’m not a fraud. I know what the inscription is on the steel blade, and the sorceress knows I didn’t get to see it outside its scabbard when I got here. Anyway, ask me any questions you like to test me.”

So Lambert asked: “Aiden, what the actual fuck?!”

“Aiden?” Keira looked at the stranger, no less surprised than her witcher.

She knew the name. Lambert once, while heavily drunk, had told her about him. She knew who Aiden was. Or who he had been, because from the information she had it had been clear that he was dead. Meanwhile, he was standing right in front of them, safe and sound, with puppy eyes. Now she understood why Lambert had attacked him. Generally seeing someone who should be dead doesn’t bode well. She tried to understand how this was possible, but suddenly realized two things.

First: Aiden had known from the beginning what he was here for. He had been aware that the witcher Keira was working with was Lambert. He’d wanted to buy the fucking swords because he knew them well – they had belonged to him. And he had been well aware that if he came at this time, he would find only the sorceress here. He had come to take a look at her, test her, tease her, and mock her.

Second: Lambert had been mourning Aiden for a very long time. And that could have been avoided. However, Aiden had allowed him to suffer and murder in the name of wrongs that probably hadn’t taken place.

In an instant she went mad with rage, and did something that neither of the witchers had apparently expected. She hadn’t really expected it herself when she let out the spell that hit Aiden hard and threw him against the wall. Before he could pick himself up, she was on him, casting another spell. The witcher began to choke.

“Did you have fun?” she hissed furiously and tugged the spell upwards with her clenched fist, as if she were pulling an invisible cord, forcing Aiden to look at her. His pupils were constricted to thin vertical lines as he tried desperately to gasp for air, certainly unable to answer questions. “You miscalculated my dear, you shouldn’t mess with someone who might wipe the floor with you!”

“Keira!” Lambert grabbed the sorceress’s wrist like a vise. Keira released the spell, and Aiden finally caught his breath. “That’s enough!”

“Sorry, I got carried away,” she said weakly, trying to get her balance back. Her heart pounded like a hammer. "But he’s been provoking me ever since he got here and he finally got what he deserved.”

“All this violence is absolutely unnecessary,” Aiden croaked, still kneeling on the floor rubbing his neck. “Can we talk? I’ll explain everything.”

“Dead people don’t talk, Aiden,” Lambert said in a voice that an iceberg would be jealous of. He stared down at him with a mixture of anger and disbelief.

“I’ve always been special.” Aiden smiled brightly at him. “Come on, give me a chance.”

This smile was completely different from the one he’d shown Keira for the last half hour. Most of all it was sincere and gentle. He looked at Lambert with trust as if he knew he would agree, regardless of the proposal.

Lambert let out an irritated huff, leaned over, grabbed Aiden by the neck like an unruly kitten and, grimacing in pain, pulled him to his feet.

 _Something’s wrong with his right shoulder_ , Keira noted. It was the second time he’d had to use it and showed signs of discomfort.

“I mourned you, you asshole,” Lambert growled, still holding his collar. “I killed a lot of people to avenge you. You better have a fucking good explanation for this farce.”

“I’m sincerely touched by your devotion.” The smile didn’t leave Aiden’s face. “And if it comforts you, you haven’t killed anyone who didn’t deserve it.”

Lambert’s eyebrow twitched dangerously. Keira thought that given just a moment longer her witcher would kill someone who definitely deserved it, and then he would regret it very much.

“Okay, that’s enough.” She interrupted their exchange of glances. “Let’s go to the back room, sit down, talk quietly and dress your wounds. Lambert, let go of him and take that armor off, I want to see your arm.”

They both looked at her in surprise, but neither moved. They irritated her immediately.

“What, did I stutter?” She huffed and gestured towards the door. “In the back, like, right fucking _now_. I don’t need a client to come and find this scene.”

“You’re letting her boss you around?“ Aiden glanced at Lambert, one eyebrow raised in ironic disbelief.

“Don’t piss me off, or I’ll let her finish what she started,” the other witcher hissed in response and obediently moved to the back, dragging Aiden with him.

Keira went to the front door and locked it. It was going to be a long and stormy evening, and she decided that there had been enough clients for today.


End file.
